In the Air Tonight (22 page)

“Not the way I was, but enough so that they changed my name. I’m hidden from the person I used to be, to the outside world. Inside … well, that’s all a work in progress.”

Paige liked that Vivi had no problem admitting to—and accepting—her flaws.

“Are things any better today with Caleb?”

“Maybe a little. Getting to know him the first time wasn’t all that easy either. This time …”

She trailed off and Paige zipped up her bag again. “Please don’t take any chances on my account.”

Vivi gave her a small smile. “I’m careful.”

“I know. That doesn’t always help, I’ve realized. I’ve been so careful. I don’t give my cell phone number to anyone, really. And I change it every year, just in case.” She frowned. “Probably sounds paranoid to you.”

“Not after growing up with my father. And, in your case, it sounds like a necessary step for keeping your personal life private.” Vivi shrugged. “Before this, I was basically a hermit. Self-imposed for the last few years. It was just easier than trusting anyone—or trusting the wrong person.”

“I guess we’ve got a lot in common.” Paige felt her stomach tighten at the thought of having actual friends again. Because she wanted friends desperately, but she also knew how dangerous it could be.

And the danger was already following her.

“It’s going to be all right, Paige. If there’s one thing I’ve learned spending time with these men, they make sure it’s all right.”

A
fter Mace and Paige left, Vivi remained at the computer, trying to see if she could find out any information on what could be triggering Paige’s brother to make contact now.

Something about the phone call didn’t sit right with her, beyond the obvious threat, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She listened to it a few more times, then glanced at Paige’s sweater, which was on the desk next to her, and wished she had asked her more questions about her brother. But time had been tight and Vivi knew that wouldn’t have gone over too well—Paige was shaken enough as it was.

She could ask Caleb more about Jeffrey.

Cael
.

She heard him moving around in the bar area and the flutter of nerves began swarming her belly again.

They were alone here. Totally alone. And that could be very, very good or very, very bad.

She forced her focus back to the computer, the phone lines and attempting to trace the call. She also Googled Paige’s brother and found out more than she’d ever wanted to know about him.

After an hour or so, she pushed back from the screen and rubbed her hands, surveyed the neat desk in front of her. Her eye caught on a spiral notebook, opened and partially hidden under some envelopes, saw a drawing and knew it was Caleb’s.

She felt guilty looking at it without asking, but not enough to resist, because this had somehow turned into trench warfare and she needed to up her game in a major way.

She turned a page and saw the familiar pencil sketches he used to do in the days they spent together. She wondered if he’d left it out on purpose for her to see and decided she didn’t care.

Many pages showed a man she didn’t recognize … and then another man. Sometimes, they were drawn together on the same page, their faces blurry, like they were being seen through a mist.

Then there was a picture of Zane, and one of Dylan too, and those made her smile. She’d never met either man but she’d seen many photos in the album in Cael’s apartment. She wondered if he’d remembered them at the time, since the drawings were dated two months earlier.

A couple of pages later her breath left her. She stared at the drawings and then touched them tentatively with a single finger, as though they might disappear if she did so.

But they didn’t.

Caleb had drawn her, and they were dated within the last few weeks, well before she’d arrived.

The sketches were similar to the ones he’d drawn of her when they were together—in the safe houses, in his apartment. He had the shading correct on her hair … her bangs, which were now grown out.

There were six of them altogether, and the last one showed her sleeping, the sheet half off her. He’d drawn the outer curve of her breast, her hip … it was at once innocent and erotic and she ran a finger lightly along the penciled edges, tried to picture Caleb drawing these. Was he confused? Was he dreaming about her?

She’d wanted him to be.

What would happen if things didn’t work out? Never regaining his memories was one thing, but if he wasn’t able to fall in love with her again, what did that mean?

Maybe it was only the danger—and the sex that came with all that fear and adrenaline—that had drawn them together in the first place. Maybe forever wasn’t in the cards.

But, God,
he’d drawn her
. That had to mean she’d meant something to him. She would hold on to that.

Reluctantly, and with shaking hands, she turned the notebook back to the page he’d left it open to and she slid it back where she’d found it, only to look up and find Caleb framed in the doorway, his broad shoulders a reminder of the nights she clung to them as he pressed inside of her. She was pretty sure her face flushed, and so she focused on the screen in front of her, ducking her head slightly, forgetting that her hair was pulled back and she couldn’t hide behind it.

She knit her fingers together so he wouldn’t see them tremble, said, “You’re still drawing,” lamely, because there was no way to deny she’d been spying. “Why didn’t you tell me that you remembered me?”

“Because I didn’t—I don’t,” he answered sharply enough to make her wince. “You’re still getting into places you don’t belong.”

Caleb, when he was on a mission, was an unstoppable force. After last night’s debacle and this morning’s uneasy truce, he seemed to accept the fact that he wasn’t getting rid of her anytime soon. Now he appeared calm, but she knew she was on extremely thin ice.

And still, she pushed. “You drew me. Naked. When I came here, you must’ve recognized me from the pictures, and you still tried to push me out the door—why?”

He ignored the question and shot back one of his own. “So, you’re working with the feds,” he started, and she nodded, refusing to admit to her lie after he’d lied to her. “Where will your home base be?”

“I’ll work out of a field office. I can work anywhere I have a computer,” she explained, felt the tension filling the air as he walked around the desk and planted himself pretty much in front of the computer—and her chair. But he left some space between them and she put her hands in her lap, still twined together.

“That means trusting people,” he said, leaned his ass against the desk.

She looked up at him. “Right.”

“And you don’t trust easily. I’m right about that, aren’t I, Vivi?”

“Very.”

“But you trusted me.”

“One of the few,” she agreed.

“I need to know more,” he said gruffly. That surprised her, threw her off balance even more than she already was.

Whatever they’d had before this was still so new, so fragile. It might not have survived under the most normal of circumstances his job allowed.

Under circumstances like these, anything would most likely crumble into a thousand pieces.

The question,
How can this work?
ran over and over in her mind.

“I’m supposed to spew out my whole life to you now because you’ve decided it’s time?”

Caleb cocked a brow. “Yes.”

“God, you always were arrogant. I shouldn’t have expected anything different.” She reminded herself that she loved this man. That she came to help him, even if the outcome wasn’t them together.

She owed him.

“Were you always this opinionated with me?” he asked.

Had she been? “I was comfortable with you, even though I was scared. I was pretty innocent in a lot of ways. I was sheltered because my dad didn’t trust anyone. That meant I didn’t either.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant at first and then it slowly dawned on him. Because, with him, as with most men, it went right back to sex. “You were a virgin?”

“No. But I was pretty close to it.”

“Did I take advantage of you? Because it sounds like you were in a vulnerable situation.”

“No,” she said firmly. “No way. You’re not like that.”

“I’m so tired of hearing what I’m like, what I’m not like, from you and from everyone.” He stood up fast and she tried to get up too, but he was too quick; he leaned over her, forcing her to stay put, trapping her with a hand on either armrest. “Did I trust you completely?”

She didn’t answer him immediately and he touched the pulse point on her neck with two fingers. “I can tell how nervous you are. Don’t bother trying to deny it.”

She didn’t. “You didn’t trust me much in the beginning. By the time you left, you did. And you were right to.”

He nodded, as if her answer satisfied him. She thought he would allow her to stand, thought the questioning was over.

She was so damned wrong.

Instead of moving back, he reached for her wrists, separated her hands easily and pulled her out of the chair. Kicked it away and pressed her up against the wall so she was trapped between him and the paneling.

“You’re lying to me, Vivi. And I want to know why.”

P
lease,” Vivi whispered and Caleb didn’t know what she was asking for but his hands held her wrists, his body pinning her to the wall, one of his thighs pressed between hers. It was an oddly sexual interrogation, but since Vivi had arrived, all his urges—sexual
and otherwise—were magnified, even as distrust and frustration with his memory loss came flooding back.

“You’ve lied to me before.”

“No. You thought I did.”

“I might not know much … but I know when someone’s keeping a secret.” His face was inches from hers, his cock was hard and his adrenaline raced. He wanted the truth from her, but he also wanted her naked, on the desk, writhing under him, and the image was disconcerting considering the current circumstances.

She licked her bottom lip. Her breath came fast. She would kiss him back, he knew that. “You’re just mad I looked at your sketches.”

That was part of it, yes, but his instincts still screamed. He might not remember Vivi well, but his subconscious seemed to. Intimately. “Tell me what you’re holding back,” he demanded.

“I’m not with the FBI,” she blurted out, nervousness making her voice a higher pitch than usual and he caught flashes of her. In a chair. Tied. Naked.

An interrogation. And she’d been scared.

He released her as if he’d been burned but he wouldn’t let it go that easily. “This happened before,” he blurted out.

“You tied me to a chair and interrogated me when we were together,” she told him. “This wasn’t about you losing control, Caleb. It was about you remembering. Re-creating.”

“I don’t want to re-create … not like this.” He shook his head.

“Please, Caleb, you have to believe me, quitting the
FBI is the only thing I lied about. And I was going to tell you when it mattered. If it mattered.”

“So all that shit you talked about earlier, about loyalty—”

“Wasn’t shit, you asshole.” She pushed her body toward his, posturing and angry and, no, that wasn’t a lie.

He almost kissed her then, but was distracted by a tall shadow moving across the back window. A quick glance back at Vivi told him she’d seen it too, which meant the person wasn’t trying too hard to remain hidden.

Still, he wasn’t taking chances. “Move to the storeroom—don’t come out until I say it’s okay,” he barked, was out the door with a baseball bat in hand in seconds.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.”

Caleb sighed, turned to find his teammate leaning against the side of the building like it was perfectly normal for him to be standing outside in the middle of a snowstorm. “Goddammit, Reid.”

Reid took a drag of his cigarette, then dropped it and ground it out with the heel of his heavy black leather boot. “What the hell are you going to do with that?”

Caleb dropped his arm, letting the bat hang loosely at his side. “There’s been some action around here.”

“I could see that. That’s why I was waiting out here.”

“Asshole.”

“Yep.”

“Mace called you in, didn’t he?” Cael asked, and
when Reid nodded, he motioned him inside, saying, “I’ll fill you in.”

Mace no doubt called him because Caleb’s memories were coming back so quickly now. Having Reid here to help them with the Paige situation would be an added bonus.

“Vivi, everything’s okay—you can come out. It’s just Reid.”

As Vivi came out of the storeroom, Caleb asked Reid, “Where’s Kell?”

“Fuck if I know.” Reid abandoned his bag in the middle of the office with a quick glance at Vivi before turning his attention back to Cael. “You don’t expect me to work here, do you?”

“Just come have a goddamned drink and stay under the radar, okay?” He pointed to Vivi. “Reid, you remember Vivi Clare, right?”

Reid cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, I do. I just didn’t think you did.”

“Don’t go there,” Caleb warned, and Reid looked between the two of them. Vivi gave a small wave and went back to the computer and Reid followed Caleb into the main part of the bar.

It was time to open the place up.

Just then, Paige’s cell phone, which had been sitting on the office desk, began to ring. The three of them stared at it like it was a ticking bomb.

A pretty apt description. Vivi picked up the phone and checked the screen.

“It’s the same number Jeffrey used before,” Vivi said. “Should I pick it up?”

Caleb nodded. “Speaker, though.”

She did as he asked, said hello softly, trying to imitate
Paige’s voice. There was a pause and then, “Hi, Paige.”

Before Vivi could say anything else, the familiar voice of Jeffrey continued to talk. And the same, familiar message from yesterday. She said, “Is this Jeffrey?” but the voice continued along without missing a beat.

It was a recording
.

Still, she hoped the message would be long enough this time to trace the call, watched the time with baited breath as Caleb’s face tightened with anger, because he was paying attention to the message.